A Man Out of Time
by cor-forte
Summary: Captain America. That is all people see when they look at Steve Rogers. They see him as a hero not a person. They don't see anything but what they want to see. The guy who will save the day again and do all the right things. Kids want to be like him. But if they really stopped to think, would they reconsider?


A dying man whose eyelids were fluttering closed one last time behind his circular spectacles. A lone figure falling into the apparently never ending abyss, whilst snow fell softly all around. A woman's voice choked with grief but covered with false hope of having a date where she could show him how to dance. All these crowded Steve Rogers mind as he sloshed his beer dregs round the glass. These thoughts and more attacked his mind every second of every day. Awake or asleep he could not escape, his dreams were infested with everything that had happened before. Now here he was. In a "greater world, a better world" but it was a world in which he did not belong. Everyone and everything he knew, dead or changed till he no longer understood half of what happened around him. Now he was a part of a new team. The Avengers. So really nothing had changed. Steve Rogers was still Captain America, fighting for good and to protect people from the bullies of the world.

Yet everything had changed and the ghosts of yesteryear still haunted his mind. People thought he was the perfect man. Yet if only they could see into his mind, then maybe they would start to understand. Steve sighed and downed the rest of his beer. It was no good, he was alone in this fight. A fight against himself.

He remembered how he had watched as Doctor Abraham Erskine had been shot twice and collapsed to the ground. He remembered how that very same Doctor, who had always believed in Steve, had tapped Steve's chest. Reminding him of how he always had to be himself. The good guy fighting the bullies.

He remembered the moment he had lost his best friend. Bucky Barnes. The guy who had been his friend when Steve was little more than a soldier wannabe and a nobody, just a guy who got beaten up in his spare time. Steve had seen that man fall to his death and hadn't saved him. For all the Super Soldier Serum which had created Captain America, he couldn't save his best friend that day.

Finally the thought which danced through his head as he and Peggy should have danced. The thought of all the pain he had put Peggy Carter through. He must have broken her heart. She thought him dead and had assumed that she was listening to his final moments that day and she had stayed strong for him. She had realised how scared he must be and despite all the emotions which must have been ripping her to pieces, she had stayed there to make sure he was not alone. He had missed the date with her. He wondered if she had turned up with the smallest hope that her Super Soldier had survived against the odds. After all it was against the odds he existed at all. He knew that she would have looked beautiful if she had turned up. He wondered how long she would have waited before the truth she had tried to dismiss hurled itself upon her, causing her heart to break entirely.

He wished he could say sorry to all of them. Apologise for not saving them or breaking their hearts and causing suffering beyond the telling of it.

Everyone expected him to be captain America: the best darned hero in existence and to be perfect no matter what. Yet did they ever stop to contemplate that all that he loved and all that he cherished was lost to him.

Steve hung his head and let the tears escape his eyes as the grief and loss washed over him like waves crashing on the shore.

He reached in his trouser pocket and removed his wallet and looked inside for the small photograph which he'd managed to find a few weeks after he'd returned to consciousness. He grasped it and pulled it out. Peggy Carter, preserved forever in a photograph that could never hope to reveal her true beauty.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, pressing his lips against the paper and closing his eyes waiting for the forgiveness which could never come.


End file.
